Manuski means humanism in Marathi. A term used by Dr B.R.Ambedkar, a great humanist of India. This blog want stimulating debate without any prejudices of caste, religion and nationalism. It is about humanism and human rights. All freethinkers are welcome to contribute and participate in stimulating debates.

Monday, November 28, 2016

Is fight against corruption today a 'corporate agenda' ?

Remembering V P Singh’s fight
against corruption

By Vidya Bhushan Rawat

These days prime minister is
becoming ‘’emotional’ on every issue and he feel that people are after him for
waging a ‘war’ against high and mighty. We do not know what does that mean but
I am sure the latest demonetization has shown that this war seems to be against
India’s poor as high and might friends of the prime minister are enjoying their
life well. Modi ji want to dig the
record of past sixty years but I wish why not of past 2000 years of brahmanical
hegemony? Every day, he brings new
issue to remain in the news. This government is being run through TV channels
as it seems, it can’t work peacefully without speaking loud. The other day
after the so called surgical strike, the prime minister said, “I want to say
that India is a ready for a war… India is a ready for a war on poverty. Let
both countries fight to see who would eradicate poverty first… I want to tell
the youth of Pakistan, let’s have a war on ending unemployment… I want to call
out to the children in Pakistan, let’s declare war on illiteracy. Let’s see who
wins. Let’s declare war on infant mortality and maternal deaths’, said the
Prime Minister during a Public Meeting in Kozhikode, Kerala according to a
report in the Indian Express on September 25th, 2016.

This
was the first major response by the Narendra Modi after 18 Soldiers were killed
by the terrorists in an attack on Brigade Headquarter of Indian army at Uri in
Jammu and Kashmir on last Sunday. It must have disappointed the ‘holy warriors’
in the studios of the corporate media on both the sides of the border who were
determined to create mass hysteria of unprecedented kind as if war is a small
thing which can happen at the whims and fancy of any one. India and Pakistan
are two warring neighbors who could reconcile to neither history nor the
present demographic outlines. Both the countries like our political parties and
diverse groups are competing with each other on weak points and negativity even
when Modi’s speech may be a remarkable climb down to his own position when as
Gujarat chief minister and ‘future’ leader of the country, he was mocking and
joking at the weak prime minister Man Mohan Singh much to the fancy of his ‘devotees’ and ‘’army of trolls’’ who
would jump on each word that he uttered and felt that once Modi took charge of
Delhi, Pakistan would be wiped out and all the Muslims in India would be
exported to some other nation on the earth, to make India a ‘pious Hindu
Rashtra’. Modi was considered essential for our power polity so that we get rid
of all the ‘problematic’ people, parties and communities.

Modi
does not disappoint his ‘followers’ and supporters as his ‘surgical strikes’
which are now becoming norms are only help to create business for them. As this
government came on big promise of creating jobs and business friendly
environment but things seems to have been stuck because of the atmosphere of
criminality in the name of ‘nationalism’ and patriotism. There are no
investments and financial sector is in complete mess. The inflation is as high
as ever and poor are facing it on the ground. Social welfare schemes have been
cut and rural employment guarantee scheme MNREGA is virtually languishing in
the absence of funds.

The
surgical strike on Pakistan is now gone. There was a situation of confrontation
at the border. Pakistan seems to realize very well that the current Indian
dispensation is adventurist and hence provoking our armed forces at the border.
Situation remains alarming in Kashmir even today. Firing from the border
continues unabated and soldiers are being killed daily.Rather
than addressing the issues seriously, we are witnessing farcical debate of who
is a nationalist and who not. Who support Pakistan and who not ? That we should
not allow Pakistani players to play in India and their film stars to work on
Indian television. Not to be outdone, the RSS business managers wanted that we
must boycott Chinese goods while Pay TM is minting money during the current crisis.

We
have plethora of issues thrown in open by the Sangh Parivar. Big banners and
posters of Narendra Modi and Amit Shah are visible in Uttar Pradesh as if they
fought the battle in Kashmir. Politicisation of the army could prove
detrimental to the health of democracy in India. We must be varying of the
regular involvement of armed forces in the internal matters as well as
projecting the armed forces as kind of related to the Sarkari party. The
retired army officers are having a great time now as war mongering provide big
TRPs for these channels. Obliging channels are working as if the Prime Minister
of India is a superman and perhaps the only ‘person’ with a mission to undo
‘historical’ wrong during the past 70 years. Ofcourse, when we talk about
historical wrongs, it must be historical wrongs like caste system,
untouchability, varna vyavastha, women and their segregation, segregation of
the physically challenged, feudalism and so many things which we normally site
as example of racist and discriminatory nature of our society but the Hindutva
historian’s history start from Nehru family and end at them only. So this obsession with ‘wrongs of the past’ of the past
seventy years does not include 6 years of Atal Bihari Vajpayee government,
about three years of Morarji and Charan Singh governments, about two and a half
years of their own government. Hindutva’s historians do not want to remember
other important landmark issues without which they can’t discuss polity today
and want to just ignore that forever.

Today,
Narendra Modi is waging a ‘war’ against ‘black money’. Now it sounds so
hypocrite for a man whose government allowed the Vijay Malyas and Lalit Modi of
our time to run away and remain ‘helpless’ in bringing the two absconders back
to India. We all know their friendship at the ruling dispensation. In just a
‘stroke’ at midnight, Modi wanted to look most ‘credible’ man in our polity. He
wanted to destroy all the memories of Nehru Gandhi family and therefore the
demonetsation happened. He had multiple targets unleashing this official
terror. One, the memories of Nehru Gandhi family will disappear and he will
remain there in circulation. Second, in Uttar Pradesh elections all the cash economy
of his opposition will be halted and his own party would find it easier to destroy
the opposition. The third and I feel it is the most important thing was that
Modi still wanted to create ‘businesses for his friends. How much it cost to print
such a huge amount of money? A rough estimate is coming around was a
staggering amount of about Rs 16,000 crore. Many people might have got contract
into the business of printing this money and one is sure it will be the big
friendly corporations.

Now,
if we see see the long queues outside the bank waiting for days to get their Rs
500/- or Rs 1000 to be deposited, it is the poor and middle classes. We have
not seen a single politician or a business tycoon. So prime minister has
carefully converted a debate of corruption among the poor people. So when you
talk about ‘blackmoney’ please do speak about your neighbor and not about
Ramdevs, Ambanis, Adanis, politicians of the ruling party. Prime minister
thought that none would speak about his friends and hence the demonetization
would make him a public hero at the cost of others without his friends getting questioned?
He thought, none would not ask question about the big business of Adani and
Ambanis or how these two companies are being shown extra charities? He
thought none would question how a yogi baba has become the biggest money
minting corporation of the country. Nobody would now question as how much
Income Tax that Patanjali corporation pays and how and why it is on a land
buying spree using good services of the governments everywhere? So fight against corruption cannot happen by
sitting with Sharad Pawar and flying in the private jets of the friends or
wearing a five lakh rupees suit or organizing huge ‘fan meeting’
internationally wherever he travelled.

Fight
against corruption would be a big joke if the person who pretends it does not
look clean. Mr Narendra Modi must remember the man who fought truly against
corruption and riding on his back BJP revived itself in the north. It was late
V P Singh, who had launched a war against corruption at high places as finance
minister in Rajiv Gandhi’s government. That was the time when industries were
fearful of the raid raj that VP had unleashed along with some of his close
confidents like Bhure Lal and Vinod Pandey. Many of the industrialists were
sent to jail. The finance minister was doing his work fairly well but the
industrialists started a campaign for dismissing VP Singh. The biggest company
which launched campaign to remove VP was Reliance and Dheerubhai Ambani which
put enormous pressure on Rajiv Gandhi. VP was shunted from finance ministry to
Defence Ministry as Rajiv knew it well that touching VP would mean difficult
those time when the public had realized that there was one man fighting against
corruption and he was send outside the ministry. Rajiv pretended that VP
Singh’s expertise need to be there in Defence Ministry and hence he was send
there but little did he knew that the defence minister would unearth scandal in
the Ministry there. VP found that there was commission paid in the HDW
Submarines from Germany and he ordered an inquiry which resulted in Rajiv
Gandhi feeling disturbed and their final parting of ways.

It
must be seen that fight against corruption is not easy. Those were the days
when we know well that the Gangotri of corruption actually flows from big
corporate houses and their chums in both politics and bureaucracy. V P Singh
used to say that if we have to clean the Ganga from corruption, it needs to be
cleaned from the top and not from the down. And people believed in him that
this man was fighting against corruption. We know how difficult is it to touch
higher ups in the corporate and in the politics. Even the Bofors deal which had
huge kickback could not be proved because the power elite use laws and
legalities to protect them. You are corrupt if the paper show you but are clean
if on paper your records are great. This is the biggest tragedy of our time. We
could not get anywhere in Bofors case not because there was no corruption but
because the power elite used the law in the best possible ways. Haven’t we seen
how Hawala deals happened? V P Singh was perhaps the only politician who was
careful of his relationships too with other politicians too. The one point
which he campaigned from the very beginning was state funding of elections as
he felt that political parties are prone to corruption as long as they have to
beg for funds from the big corporate houses.

How
come the cleanest person of India is not even remembered for his fight against
corruption those responsible for organizing riots and hatred, travelling with
the most corrupted are claiming to be the biggest champions of fight against
corruption without cleaning their Gangotri first? Yes, to understand the nature
of our corrupted social system, we have to go to the famous announcement that
VP Singh made on August 7th, 1990 at the Parliament for the
implementation of the Mandal Commission Report enabling 27% quotas in the
central government services for the OBCs. It is this decision of fighting
against social hierarchical corruption that made V P Singh the biggest villain
in the eyes of upper castes and they have not forgiven him even today. It is shameful
that even the politicians who worked with him don’t remember him. We know media
had a grudge as they feared VP Singh who they knew was a mass leader and knew
social sciences much better than those who claim to be expert on the issue.
Upper caste media’s hatred against VP Singh was so high that even the
self-proclaimed champions of left liberal secular thoughts in India never want
to utter VP Singh and his enormous work in their campaign as far as Congress is
concern, it will never get Mandalised and as long as it will not, it wont be
able to fight against corruption. Fight against corruption is itself fighting
against caste system after all who are the biggest wheeler-dealers in the Dalal
Street ? The Dalal street in Mumbai is monopolized by two to three castes in
India and I don’t need to name them? It is well known. The corruption flows
from there but our ‘honest’ chaiwallah PM is not ready to fight against them as
that would squeeze him from funds of the next elections. All those BCCI wallahs
who are deep necked in corruptions are best advisers of this government but
then you won’t touch them.

Modi
ji must remember VP Singh as Lal Krishna Advani made him his charioteer when he
started his bloodied (W)rath yatra from Somnath to Ayodhya in September-October
1990. Yes, some of the best friends of Narendra Modi today, fought bitterly
against VP Singh is a well-known fact. How can we expect corrupted media paid
and survived on the illicit money of corrupt corporate can ever speak good of a
person who had the courage to send them to Jail ? If the current regime wanted
to fight against corruption, let it start from Dalal Street and send some of
the cronies to Jail. Investigate the corrupt funds in BCCI, at the Bollywood
and then we will feel that the fight against corruption is going to a logical
conclusion, an initiative that VP Singh started but politicians did not have
the courage to continue.

V
P Singh passed away on November 28th and our brahmanical seculars
and anti-corruption crusaders will not have time to remember him and his
selfless crusade but without understanding VP Singh and his politics who we
miss today, we will never be able to take the corporate driven anti-corruption
agenda being faithfully implemented by the regime today and its chums in the
media.

Followers

About Me

Learning through working. Working at the grassroots made me realise the big difference between those who claim to represent communities as well as the communities themselves. Common man is crushed between the ambitions of various individuals to lead and dominate. The dominant and high numbered communities will always dominate our discourse and the most marginalised are losing in this entire discourse. That is the reason why Mushahar remain at the marginalised and the issue of manual scavenging still not on our top agenda and to eliminate that the community has to decide its own organisations..

I am devoted to freedom of ideas and expression. I personally feel that we in the subcontinent want to dominate and control our discourse and each one of is a ultra nationalist in terms of their caste and community. Nationalism is not just national and political but it is equally in term of religion and caste. I feel each kind of nationalism is a dominant discourse which deny the dissenter a right to speak.

At the end, we all want to listen the truth suitable to us.. we have become expertised in the art of speaking truth of convenience. As long as that remain hall mark of our society and we speak to already converts, this society will remain stagnant, it will always try to control our ideas and choices. We need to oppose any such perception, ideas that want to control our mind and victimise us.

To understand India further, I feel, it is good to do foot walk, ( Padyatras) to various parts of the country. I have so far done it thrice covering nearly 1500-2000 kilometers. It is always interesting to see how people are coping their issues and what is the reason of their exploitation.